Bush presses UN to end war quickly - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune

President George W. Bush on Monday urged quick action by the United Nations Security Council to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and install an international peacekeeping force to help Lebanese troops police the troubled south, but agreement remained elusive in the face of strong Arab opposition.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appearing with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, played down the strong reservations from Lebanon and other governments, which have appeared to sidetrack a U.S.-French diplomatic effort to halt weeks of fighting.

"There is more agreement than you might think," said Rice, who had spoken Sunday to the prime ministers of both Israel and Lebanon. "We have a reasonable basis here that both sides can accept." She called the UN proposals a "firm foundation" for peace.

But in New York, where UN Security Council ambassadors were considering the U.S.-French plan, Ambassador Jean- Marc de La Sablière of France said that changes would probably be made to the draft following the negative reaction of Lebanon and Arab League representatives, Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon said Monday in Beirut that he had won the "complete, complete, complete backing" of Arab League foreign ministers, who had held an emergency meeting in the Lebanese capital, for a plan that would demand that Israeli forces leave Lebanon immediately, language not part of the current draft.

In an emotional speech, Siniora urged the 22-country group to help "correct" the UN draft, and an Arab League delegation left shortly thereafter for New York, said a Lebanese official quoted by Agence France-Presse. The meeting sealed a day of continued violence and misplaced emotions as reports of a massacre of 40 people in the southern Lebanese town of Houla proved unfounded when all but one of a family inside a home bombarded by Israeli fire were found alive in the rubble.

Israel, meanwhile, raised the pressure for a breakthrough at the United Nations. Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Monday in Jerusalem that Israel would broaden its ground offensive within days if diplomatic efforts to end the fighting failed to make progress.

"I gave an order that, if within the coming days the diplomatic process does not reach a conclusion, Israeli forces will carry out the operations necessary to take control of Katyusha rocket launching sites in every location," Peretz told a parliamentary committee in a statement broadcast by the Israeli media. He called this "one of the most decisive stages of this war."

Perhaps anticipating a diplomatic advance, Lebanon called up reservists Monday before a possible deployment of 15,000 troops to the south, security and political sources told Reuters.

Bush described the UN resolution being considered by the Security Council, which calls for Hezbollah immediately to stop all attacks and for Israel immediately to stop offensive military operations. It also calls for a halt in the shipment of any unauthorized arms to Lebanon. He said a second resolution, which the Security Council would take up as soon as possible, would help establish a "sustainable and enduring cease-fire" and provide a mandate for an international force to help the Lebanese Army extend its authority throughout the country.

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As this happens, Bush said, "the Israeli Defense Forces will withdraw and both Israel and Lebanon will respect the Blue Line that divides them."

But Rice acknowledged some key obstacles to progress.

"There are some issues of timing and sequence that need to be worked out," she said, and "there are some concerns about when an international force would actually be available."

Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, had said Sunday that his country could not accept the U.S.- French draft because it did not call for an immediate Israeli troop withdrawal. Hezbollah's chief foreign backers, Syria and Iran, have expressed opposition to an international force.

Meantime, U.S. allies, several of which have troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, have been slow to volunteer for service in Lebanon. And Bush confirmed anew Monday that the United States did not plan to contribute troops to an international force, though he offered assistance with logistics and command-and-control operations.

After the deaths of 15 Israelis on Sunday from rocket attacks, the Israeli government is under pressure to try to stop the rain of rocket attacks on northern Israel, and the army says it can only do that if it can push Hezbollah rocket- launching teams beyond the Litani River, some 25 kilometers, or 15 miles, north of the border.

A cease-fire that holds would make such a push unnecessary. The Israelis say that a push to the Litani would take time and would be costly in terms of casualties on both sides. But without a diplomatic solution, they say, the military advance must continue. Rice said Monday that it was understandable that the parties to the intense hostilities, which have claimed a rising number of lives on both sides and battered buildings, ports and bridges, particularly in Lebanon, would not immediately find agreement. But she added: "There is more agreement than you might think about how to prevent, again, a situation in which you have a state within a state able to launch an attack across the Blue Line."

She added: "There is agreement that the Lebanese government needs to extend its authority throughout the country, that it needs to have the Lebanese armed forces move to take care of this vacuum that has been existing in the south, that there should not be any armed groups able to operate in the south the way that Hezbollah has been able to operate."

"Everybody agrees it's time to have a cessation" in hostilities, Rice said.

Steven Erlanger of The New York Times contributed reporting from Jerusalem.